Jimmy the Kid

What happens when you plop precocious Gary Coleman into the middle of a caper comedy with great actors like Paul Le Mat, Dee Wallace, Ruth Gordon, Cleavon Little, Pat Morita, TV personalities Don Adams and Avery Schreiber, and perennial 'fat guy' character actor Walter Olkewicz? You get one of the most moronic forgotten comedies of the '80s!

Based on the novel of the same name by Donald E. Westlake, with a script penned by "Saved By the Bell" creator Sam Bobrick, and directed by "The Black Hole"'s Gary Nelson, "Jimmy the Kid" centers on an eclectic group of petty burglars (Le Matt, Wallace, Gordon, Olkewicz) who decide to use a novel as their inspiration for a kidnapping heist that they hope will result in the biggest payoff of their criminal careers. The target? Obviously that's the young, wealthy, wisecracking Coleman, in his second (and last) leading role in a theatrical film. Soon detective Adams (in Maxwell Smart mode, as always) is on the trail of the kidnappers, bumbling all the way. Here's the trailer:

Although made in the early '80s (Dee Wallace most likely went right from the set of "E.T." to this), the film's got a distinctly late '70s vibe to it. There's car chases, off-color jokes, bumbling cops, there's even a scene set at McDonald's and a great period score by John Cameron ("Psychomania"). And speaking of that score, the end credits cite a soundtrack release on Regency Records, which I spent a quarter of a century searching for... but apparently it was never actually issued.The story's pretty dumb and some of the gags are lame -- but there are a bunch of great one-liners, and scene stealing Ruth Gordon's character is one of the funniest she ever played (aside from her iconic role in "Harold and Maude," of course). Wallace is also cute and charismatic, speaking with a fabricated squeaky voice that makes her seem like a 1930s gangster's moll. Matter of fact, the whole gang of criminals are extremely lovable and well cast... but other characters didn't fare quite as well.Pat Morita as Coleman's blind limo driver(!) gets stuck in one eye-rolling gag after another. Don Adams spends a good chunk of the film in drag doing his inane schtick. (Chances are Adams was cast because director Gary Nelson directed many episodes of "Get Smart" as well as the '80s TV movie "Get Smart Again.") Jimmy's parents (Cleavon Little, Fay Hauser) are cartoonish country singers who sing a painfully stupid song called "Keep Your Paws Off of My Dog." And former Doritos spokesman Avery Schrieber briefly appears as Jimmy's perpetually confused German psychiatrist.

The film was released in November 1982, which ensured its fate as a forgotten film. The easiest way for a studio to bury a picture is to release it in mid-November, because ticket sales are slow and it's pretty much guaranteed it'll be bumped out of theatres within a few weeks to make room for an onslaught of holiday movies. Didn't help matters that 1982 was an especially big year for blockbusters. But, like so many other movies that suffered the same fate, it quickly turned up on HBO and was scheduled fairly continuously for the next five years. Unfortunately, it's since been forgotten and has never been released on DVD. Similarly, the novel's been out of print for almost 20 years and now fetches ridiculous resale prices.

Should mention that Bobrick opted not to keep a great inside joke from Westlake's novel: the kidnappers were following a book called "Child Heist," written by Richard Stark. Stark is one of Westlake's aliases. Westlake's novel was again adapted to a 1999 German film released by Buena Vista (?!). There's not much information about the '99 film online (though there's a brief TV spot on YouTube) and that version's never been issued on video in any format, but it's worth noting that the German "Jimmy" was a little white girl.

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